


Distant Sunset

by GalileoSunshine



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project, Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Long-Distance Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 02:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12333693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalileoSunshine/pseuds/GalileoSunshine
Summary: Chika and Riko are in a long-distance relationship after high school. Despite the distance, they attempt to have a sunset date.For ChikaRiko Week Day 1: Distance/Sunset





	Distant Sunset

Riko’s cellphone rang abruptly on top of her piano, and the song she was practicing came to a jarring stop. She eyed the phone and wondered if she should answer, while her ringtone continued to blare in stark contrast to the pensive classical piece that was just being played. Finally, with a sigh after a moment of indecision, Riko lifted her hands from the ivory keys and picked up the phone. 

The caller ID read _Chika-chan_. She swiped to answer. 

“Hello?” 

“Riko-chan!” Chika’s cheery voice came from the other side. “How’re you doing? Um, are you busy right now?” 

“Well, I was in the middle of practice…” 

“Oh, you were? Sorry...” 

“No, it’s ok! What is it?” 

Chika was quiet for a second. When she finally spoke, her voice was small, and hesitant. “You didn’t…forget about our date, right?” 

“What? Of course not!” Riko answered. “I even had an alarm set so I would end practice 20 minutes before I needed to go. And speaking of which, it should be going off any minute now.” 

“Oh, really?” Chika gave a forced laugh, embarrassed. “I guess I was just a bit scared that you forgot, so I called, ehehe.” 

Riko’s smiled, imagining the sheepish grin on Chika’s face right now, and inwardly her chest tightened. Chika was always a bit of an airhead, but the fact that she was worried about it that much just showed how much she cared. 

“There’s no way I’d forget,” Riko said, at the same time switching off the alarm on her phone that she had set earlier. “We made a promise, didn’t we?” 

“Yeah…”

As they lapsed into silence, Riko danced the fingers of her free hand over the keys of her piano, silently playing the left half of a song. It was something she did often when she and Chika had lulls in their conversations, which occurred at the piano more frequently than Riko would have liked. Although Riko was always happy to talk to Chika, she would have also loved to have just two uninterrupted practice sessions in a row. 

But today, she didn’t mind as much. 

Today was different.

~

It was after high school. After mulling over it for months before graduation, Riko in the end decided to leave Uchiura and enroll in a prestigious music school in Tokyo. Chika stayed behind and helped at her family’s inn, in the meantime trying to figure out what she wanted to do next. It was hard on them both to separate from each other, and they knew that they’re relationship would be strained due to the long distance. But they were both determined to make their relationship work.

They texted and called each other often. They video chatted with each other on weekends, and streamed movies together. Occasionally, when time permitted, they would visit each other in Tokyo or back in Uchiura. They did everything they could to get around the distance, to feel as close as they could be to one another…including dates like the one they had planned today.

 

“I want to watch the sunset with you,” Chika had said, in a phone call a few days ago. 

Riko’s heart skipped a beat, and her mind began to swirl with all the scenarios of sunset dates she had read in her doujins...

Sitting together on the cool sandy beach of Uchiura, holding hands as the last of the sun’s rays disappeared, staying just a bit longer afterwards, cuddled up together against the sudden coldness, and finally, sharing a secret kiss in the darkness…  
Riko was starting to get dizzy, with her shirt sticking uncomfortably against her skin, and heart beating as if it were trying to force its way out of her chest. 

_A sunset date with Chika-chan…_ , Riko thought, almost sighing. 

“Uh…Riko-chan?”

Riko quickly snapped back to reality, and she shook her head clear of those fantasies. 

“Chika-chan…I would love to,” Riko said, her sensible side slowly returning. “But I can’t travel all the way out to Uchiura just to watch the sunset. I’ll have to skip my afternoon class, and then I’ll have to spend the night there and probably miss my morning class.”

“No!” Chika quickly responded. “I wouldn’t make you do that! But…maybe you don’t have to!”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe we can just…be on the phone with each other at the same time, and talk, while we watch the sunset from where we are?”

“Oh…hmm…does that really count as ‘watching the sunset together’?”

“It does!” Chika answered emphatically, almost a shout, making Riko pull the phone back from her ear for a second. Then Chika's voice softened. “It’ll have to do for us…right?” 

Riko frowned. It always hurt her to be reminded of their long-distance relationship. Part of her wanted so badly to just forget about her classes, take the next bullet train to Shizuoka, and hop on the quickest bus to Uchiura. The urge to get up and rush straight to Chika was so strong she had to get up and pace the room, just to feel like she was _moving_ , to stave off the need. 

But at the same time, her music studies were also important to her, and she knew how much Chika wanted this for her as well. She was always telling her to “chase her dream”, and to “shine”. And as long as she knew Chika was supporting her, cheering her on from wherever she was, she can put up with the distance for the time being. 

_I really shouldn’t be complaining either_ , she thought. After all, the things they could do “together” were already quite limited. Riko took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. 

“Yes,” Riko said finally, bringing back a smile to her lips. “It sounds nice, Chika-chan.” 

“Ok, then! Um, how about Friday?”

“Friday’s good.” 

“Great! Oh, and I looked it up, and the sun usually sets around 7:30 around this time. I’ll head to the beach maybe 20 minutes before. And you can…” Chika stopped in her tracks, realizing that there were no beaches in Tokyo. 

“It’s ok!” Riko said, reading Chika’s thoughts. “I can get to the roof of my apartment. It’s a high-rise apartment building with a pool on the roof. I should be able to see the horizon from there.” 

“Oh, thank goodness,” Chika sighed in relief, and Riko chuckled in response. “So then…it’s a date!”

“Yeah,” Riko smiled again. It wasn’t her ideal picture of a sunset date, but as long as it was with Chika, she was happy. “It’s a date.”

“Promise not to forget, ok?”

“Going by our past dates, if anyone’s going to forget, it’s you Chika-chan.”

“Heey! I’ve gotten better about these things!”

Riko laughed, and soon Chika was laughing along too.

“Promise?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

~

And so, the appointed time came. 

At her piano, Riko’s silent song slowly came to a stop. It was probably time to go. She checked the clock hanging on the wall to confirm. 

“Chika-chan, I’m going up to the roof now.” 

“Ah, ok!”

“You better start heading to the beach, too.”

“Well actually…I’m already there, hehe.” 

It was only then that Riko heard the sound of waves rolling up the sand. 

“Geez, Chika-chan…” Riko sighed, but despite herself she was grinning. 

“Haha, sorry…”

Riko wondered how long she’s been there. Chika-chan must have been really looking forward to this, she thought. Riko felt light-headed again, almost as though she were caught up in one of her doujin fantasies again. She was dizzy from how much she loved Chika, and from how much she knew Chika loved her back. 

“Ok, I’m heading there now.” 

As quickly as she could, Riko threw on a thin jacket, grabbed her keys and purse, and left her apartment. 

 

On the beach of Uchiura, Chika stood barefoot, digging her toes into the cooling sand and breathing in the ocean breeze. There were few people on the beach that evening, and even then, they were at a distance, on the other end of the shoreline. Chika was practically alone, and she had made sure of that by coming early to claim a spot for herself. 

The sun hung low in the sky, bathing her in swathes of orange light that tickled her face with its warmth, even as the ocean wind chilled her. Her phone was clutched close to her ear, and Riko’s voice on the other side pulsed in her head, and spread like ripples through her whole body. She loved hearing Riko’s voice, and after not having heard it in a few days, all she wanted to do then was drink it all in. 

“Ok, I’m heading there now,” Riko’s said. 

“Yay! Hurry, ok?” Chika answered excitedly, bouncing a bit. 

“I’m hurrying, don’t worry.” 

“Tell me when you get there, and how it looks from your end!” 

Riko hummed a yes. Chika then heard the sound of Riko’s keys jingling and of her door slamming shut. 

“So…” Chika asked, trying to prolong their conversation. “How was your day?” 

“It was pretty good. Why do you ask?”

_I just like hearing your voice_ , Chika thought to herself.

“I just want to know,” was what she said instead. “I can ask, right? I am your girlfriend.”

“Well…yes,” Riko’s voice came back in a squeak. 

_Ahh, I bet she’s blushing_ , Chika thought to herself again, a grin forming unwittingly on her face. Riko still wasn’t used to that word being said aloud, and still turned bashful whenever Chika used it in public. _I want to see her blushing face_. 

But Chika had to make do with her imagination. 

“Well, I woke up a bit late,” Riko continued. “I was almost late to my music theory class, but somehow I made it in the end.” 

“Oh, that’s good!”

“Yeah. And in composition, Professor Nagasaki complimented my changes to the new song.”

“Wow, that’s rare! He never compliments.”

“I know! And I thought I was going nowhere with that song. There was this one phrase I kept changing over and over, and…”

Chika sat down on the sand, hugging her knees close to her chest, settling in to listen to Riko talk. When Riko started talking about composing, she could go on for a while. And although Chika didn’t understand most of what Riko said, she still wanted to hear. 

“….and there I use the parallel major instead, which is somewhat unusual considering….”  
“…then the lyric second theme is accompanied by the main motif in the first theme, but in bass counterpoint…”  
“…I don’t know, should I make that part more expressive? Or should I stick to the form?”

Chika laughed and scratched her head. “I get that it’s all very complicated.” 

“Or maybe I should…oh, I’m here Chika-chan!” 

Chika sat up a little straighter. Through the phone, Chika could hear the creak of a rusty door give way, and the sudden noise of wind blowing. 

“Aah, this reminds me of being on the roof of Uranohoshi,” Riko said, fondly reminiscing about their days as school idols. “I wish UraJo had a pool on the roof, too. It would’ve made those summer days much more tolerable.” 

“How does the sunset look?” Chika asked. On the roof her apartment building, Riko walked to the edge, leaning against the metal guard rails and looking out to the horizon. A horizon made of skycrapers, signal towers, and large electronic displays of advertisements. 

“It’s…probably not as beautiful as the beach of Uchiura. But it’s not bad! The cityscape is pretty amazing. I do wish there was water, though.” 

“Ehehe, Uchiura is pretty great, huh?” Chika said proudly. “I think the water is extra sparkly today! Like stars in the daytime!” 

“I guess I’ll have to settle for the lights from people’s windows,” Riko laughed. 

“The sky is really beautiful too.” 

“Yeah…it is.”

They both stopped to take in the view. Chika stretched out her legs and leaned back, planting her hands behind her to steady herself as she tilted her head back to look straight up. Riko likewise directed her gaze away from the city buildings and to the sky. 

The sky was illuminated with bands of orange, pink, and violet, and ribbons of smoky gray clouds swirling within. It was a sea of colors that tumbled and danced together, combining and separating into every hue in between. The sun itself seemed to be throbbing as it cast its rays out into the surrounding sky, making the air around it shimmer like a mirage, or a dream.

“I’d really like to paint this,” Riko said, sighing at the sight before her. 

“You still have about five minutes,” Chika joked. 

“By the time I go down to get my brushes and come back up, I’ll have missed it.” 

“Ahaha yeah, don’t do that.” 

They fell into silence again, watching the sun sink slowly, until it was just above the horizon line, and the oranges and pinks in the sky became even more vibrant. 

“The sky kinda reminds you of us, doesn’t it?” Chika asked. 

Riko gave that half-sigh and half-laugh that she reserved for entertaining Chika’s crazy ideas and antics. “What makes you say that?” 

“Well, they’re our image colors! Y’know, during lives? There’s mikan-orange, and there’s sakura pink!” Chika said with a puffed-up voice, obviously really taken by her own cleverness. 

“I think they’re just regular orange and regular pink, though.”

“Aww come on, Riko-chan, you’re no fun.” 

“Okaay,” Riko chuckled, “I’ll play along.”

Chika curled up and hugged her knees into her chest again. The sky did remind her of the two of them, but because it did, it was also painful. Chika felt her heart squeeze, like it was being wrung like a washcloth, and she hugged her knees even tighter. She thought back to when Riko first confessed to her. The scenery was just a bit different, it was a sunrise, not a sunset. But what Chika remembered most was the warmth of Riko’s body when she hugged her, the softness of her hands as they held them together, and the tenderness of her voice when she said, _“I love you.”_

“It’s makes me…sad.” 

“Eh?” Riko voiced, growing uneasy by Chika’s sudden change in tone. “What…do you mean?” 

“I can’t really explain it well but…the oranges and pinks in the sky…the way they mix and blend and can just…be together…I wish we could be like that.” 

“Chika-chan…”

“I want to be next to you. I don’t want to hear your voice through a phone. I want to see your face and your eyes when we talk.”

“Chika-chan, I–”

“I want to do lots of things with you!” Chika quickly said, cutting Riko off. Her voice slowly rose in volume as she rushed out her next words. “I want to cook with you and go shopping with you! And I want to hold your hand, and kiss you, and cuddle with you! I want to fall sleep together and get tangled in blankets and wake up next to each other in the morning! I want to do…so many things with you. Actually _with_ you.” 

“Chika-chan, stop, don’t say anymore.”

“I know it can’t be helped,” she continued anyways, her voice trembling as she spoke. She put her head down and squeezed her eyes shut, not even bothering to look at the sunset now, as it started to dip its edge below the horizon. “I know we said we’ll wait till after your music studies to be together, but I don’t know if I can wait much longer. And I know we visit each other sometimes, but every time you leave to go back to Tokyo it hurts even more, and I want to see you even more!” 

Her whole body quivered as she tried to push down the sobs rising in her chest. She gripped her crossed arms and squeezed as hard as she could, as though it could stop herself from shaking. Her nails dug into her skin until it hurt. 

“I…miss you…” Chika said, her voice a cracked whisper. 

“Chika-chan…I…”

Riko was fighting tears of her own. Everything Chika said struck her like blows, since she had felt those exact same things. The words she wanted to say were stuck in her throat. But she couldn’t not say it. Chika had opened herself up to her, and so, no matter what, she had to tell Chika her feelings, too. Taking a long, shaky breath, she forced the words out. 

“I miss you too, Chika-chan.” 

At those words, Chika finally broke down into tears. They came gushing out like a broken dam, spilling down her face and clouding her vision. She could barely breathe, the sobs racking her body making the breaths she took stuttered. Frustration, exhaustion, desire, longing… months of bottled-up feelings, feelings which she didn’t know she was holding back, were finally let out.  
Over the phone, and above her own choked cries, Chika could just make out Riko crying as well, and somehow that made her cry even more. They cried together long after the sun had already set, but neither of them noticed. 

~

Chika and Riko’s eyes were puffy and their cheeks stung. When their tears finally stopped, neither could say a word, their crying had left both of them exhausted. All either could hear of each other over the phone was their soft breathing, and the occasional sniffle when they wiped their noses. 

Chika finally looked up, and was met with the dark expanse of the water at night. She had missed the sunset. The darkness wrapped around her like a blanket, so thick it weighed her down and prevented her from moving...or maybe that was just her own depression. 

“Chika-chan,” Riko suddenly said, her voice coarse and shaky. 

“Yeah?” Chika answered. 

Riko took another shaky breath to steady herself. “I…I’m glad we had this date. I’m glad we were able to let our feelings out. Although we still can’t do anything about it, I’m glad that I was able to tell you how I felt, and that you told me how you felt”

In that moment, another memory surfaced from the depths of Chika’s memory. When Aqours had their first major event, a performance in Tokyo, and had lost with zero votes, Chika had held in her frustration as well. Her confidence was shaken, and she was at a loss as to whether they should continue as Aqours. Hoping to find some answers, she jumped into the water at the beach, but all she saw was the darkness beneath the waves.

And then Riko had come, frantically shouting her name, her voice calling her out of the water. She wrapped her arms around her, and told her it was ok to be frustrated. 

_“I’m so glad. You’re finally letting it out.”_

_“But if I cry, it’ll make everyone feel down, right?”_ And then, she felt the softness of Riko’s hands holding hers as she told her again, that it was ok. 

_“Don’t worry about it. Whatever you’re feeling, just let it all out.”_

It seemed so long ago. But now, as Riko spoke, the warmth of her voice and the softness of her breaths over the phone brought it all back to her, and it was as though she could feel Riko’s arms wrapped around her again, and the comfort of Riko’s warmth against her back, and the tenderness of Riko’s voice whispering in her ear. Just like before. 

“I’m glad we had this date,” Riko said. 

Chika’s lip trembled, and she felt like crying again. “Me too, I’m glad too.” 

Chika took a deep breath and stood up. Slowly, the soft light of the stars emerged from the blankness of the sky, and suddenly the night didn’t seem as dark, and the darkness didn’t seem as heavy. 

“Riko-chan,” she said. “You know what?”

“What?” 

“I think we can make it through this.” 

“I think so too, Chika-chan.” 

 

On the other end of the phone, Riko leaned her elbows on the guard rails in front of her, taking in the sight of the city lights at night. It was a shame she couldn’t properly see when the sun actually set. Her tears had made it all too blurry. 

But at the moment, even with her eyes red and her nose running, she felt happier than she had in a long time. She felt so light, like a great weight had finally lifted, and that the night wind ruffling her clothes might just carry her off. 

“I think we should go back inside now,” she finally said, breaking the silence. “It’s getting pretty cold.” 

“Yeah, you’re right,” Chika replied. “Sorry for making things so…emotional.”

“It’s ok! Thanks for asking me out to see the sunset.” 

“Ahaha, we didn’t even see it though...” 

“Still, thanks.”

“Yeah…”

Riko turned around to start heading back to her apartment, but then stopped in her tracks. There was one more thing she had to say, something just as important as the feelings they had admitted to each other tonight. And Chika must have been thinking the same thing, because although she had planned to say it first, Chika beat her to it. 

“Riko-chan, I love you.” 

Riko felt her face flush just the slightest. “I love you too, Chika-chan.” 

“Talk to you tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“Ok, then…goodnight!”

“Good night, Chika-chan.” 

Riko pulled the phone from her ear, her finger hovering over the end call button. She didn’t want to press it and end her connection to Chika, and the fact that the call still hasn’t been dropped meant Chika was hesitating too. The corners of her mouth turned ever so slightly upward in a small smile. It was always like this, at the end of their phone calls.

Riko sucked in a quick breath and quickly pressed the button. 

It definitely wasn’t her ideal sunset date. There was no hand holding, no cuddling, and it didn’t end with a kiss. But her heart felt full. Riko took one last look at the city lights, and headed back inside.

**Author's Note:**

> I combined the two prompts for the day, welp.
> 
> This is my first fanfic....ever! So I would be happy if you read it with kind eyes. I really hope you enjoyed it, and of course, all constructive criticism is welcome!
> 
> I feel like I might have bit off more than I could chew, ahaha...There were various elements I tried to bring in, like Chika and Riko's banter, the flashbacks, and of course, the emotions. Whether I was able to bring it all together in a coherent whole, I don't know, but I hope you enjoyed it somewhat! 
> 
> Also! Originally I wrote that Riko is the one who cries first, but after episode 1 of the new season I realized....even though Chika is so cheerful, she's quite quick to cry!


End file.
